Go Farther With Adaptive. FASTER.

For seven decades, Pratt & Whitney has defined adaptive engine technology, enabling continued air dominance for our military customers.

Today, we’re developing and fielding next-generation adaptive technologies at a pace that ensures our customers have the capabilities required to maintain the operational edge now and into the future.

Our suite of unmatched adaptive technologies extends beyond a new architecture and provides options for control systems, power and thermal management, as well as sustainment capabilities to meet the demands of range, persistence, survivability, maintainability and advanced weapon systems.

The Spiral Approach

Pratt & Whitney’s Future Adaptive Spiral Technology approach enables the timely insertion of next-generation propulsion technologies into current and future platforms. We can spiral in new technologies as they become available, and provide a full range of options for our customers to keep them ahead of evolving threats. Our approach is aligned with the acquisition strategies and mission readiness objectives of our customers. Our purpose is to get mature technologies into the hands of the warfighter quickly.

Our spiral approach is built on four integrated pillars of innovation:

Engine Architecture

A demand-modulated engine architecture enables modulation between high thrust and high fuel efficiency, but it represents only one aspect of performance benefits when it comes to delivering a full integrated suite of capabilities.

Power & Thermal Management Systems (PTMS)

Advances in power and thermal management technologies open the aperture for the integration of more powerful sensors, data fusion, electronic warfare, and directed energy capabilities.

Control Systems

Sustainment

To Pratt & Whitney, sustainment means fully realizing our vision of prognostic health monitoring to generate true condition-based maintenance. This means making sense of a digital thread for the entire engine throughout its life cycle.

Adaptive is in our DNA

We’ve been developing and fielding adaptive technologies across a range of platforms and applications for over six decades. Our recognized leadership in defining adaptive technologies gives us unique insights to go beyond today’s performance capabilities, and foresight into what will be required of future adaptive engine technologies.

F-35B Lightning II

F135 STOVL / 2015

The F135 Short Takeoff/Vertical Landing (STOVL) variant for the F-35B Lightning II is the most advanced operational adaptive engine ever produced with the ability to transition between hover and conventional flight at the push of a button. The F135 also offers variant-common growth options to meet tomorrow’s threats head-on.

F-22 Raptor

F119 / 2005

We continued to push the boundaries of propulsion with the F119, the engine that powers the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor. Engineered for ease of maintenance on the ground with supercruise capabilities and thrust vectoring in flight, the F119 enables air dominance for decades to come.

SR-71 Blackbird

J58 / 1964

Our history building engines with adaptive capabilities began with the J58 engine, featuring the world’s first adaptive engine architecture. Powering the SR-71 Blackbird, the Pratt & Whitney J58 set records for flight altitude and speed that still stand.

Growth Options For The F135

Unleashing the World's Most Advanced Fighter Engine

Pratt & Whitney has a legacy of providing upgrades to its military engine products and is ready to take the world’s most advanced fighter engine to the next level.

Growth Option 1.0 offers an affordable, variant-common upgrade that would be available to all F-35 program participants and can be seamlessly integrated into the global fleet — either retrofitted during routine overhauls or cut into production at no impact to the engine delivery schedule. The upgrade is also fully compatible with existing F135 sustainment infrastructure.

Performance benefits include:

5%-6% fuel burn improvement

6%-10% thrust increase

Up to a 5% powered lift thrust increase for the F-35B variant (with modifications to the lift fan)

Bringing the Future, Faster

As the F-35 program moves forward with the Continuous Capability Development and Delivery (C2D2) strategy, we strive to stay in front of propulsion advances needed to enable F-35 modernization. One area that is emerging as a critical enabling capability for future block upgrades to the F-35 aircraft is power and thermal management system (PTMS) improvements.

As a result, Pratt & Whitney is offering a Growth Option 2.0 upgrade for the F135 engine that can provide increased PTMS capacity and can be configured based on customer requirements.

Growth Option 2.0, which incorporates the same suite of compressor and turbine technologies in Growth Option 1.0, offers:

Range of options for increased PTMS capacity

5-6% fuel burn improvement

6-10% thrust increase

Up to a 5% powered lift thrust increase for the F-35B variant (with modifications to the lift fan)

By selecting from Pratt & Whitney's full suite of technologies, F-35 customers can choose the magnitude of PTMS improvement, as the mission requires. Increases in PTMS capacity can enable a broad range of F-35 capability growth at the air vehicle level.

Growth Option 1.0 offers an affordable, variant-common upgrade that would be available to all F-35 program participants and can be seamlessly integrated into the global fleet — either retrofitted during routine overhauls or cut into production at no impact to the engine delivery schedule. The upgrade is also fully compatible with existing F135 sustainment infrastructure.

Performance benefits include:

5%-6% fuel burn improvement

6%-10% thrust increase

Up to a 5% powered lift thrust increase for the F-35B variant (with modifications to the lift fan)

Bringing the Future, Faster

As the F-35 program moves forward with the Continuous Capability Development and Delivery (C2D2) strategy, we strive to stay in front of propulsion advances needed to enable F-35 modernization. One area that is emerging as a critical enabling capability for future block upgrades to the F-35 aircraft is power and thermal management system (PTMS) improvements.

As a result, Pratt & Whitney is offering a Growth Option 2.0 upgrade for the F135 engine that can provide increased PTMS capacity and can be configured based on customer requirements.

Growth Option 2.0, which incorporates the same suite of compressor and turbine technologies in Growth Option 1.0, offers:

Range of options for increased PTMS capacity

5-6% fuel burn improvement

6-10% thrust increase

Up to a 5% powered lift thrust increase for the F-35B variant (with modifications to the lift fan)

By selecting from Pratt & Whitney's full suite of technologies, F-35 customers can choose the magnitude of PTMS improvement, as the mission requires. Increases in PTMS capacity can enable a broad range of F-35 capability growth at the air vehicle level.